Weird Science

The truth about the Mona Lisa Effect

Ever looked at a face on a billboard and felt the gaze follow you as you moved past?

It’s called the Mona Lisa Effect, and scientists have explained how it happens — or how it doesn’t, at least with Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic painting.

“People can feel like they’re being looked at from photographs and paintings if the person portrayed looks straight ahead out of the image, at a gaze angle of zero degrees,” says Professor Gernot Horstmann, of Germany’s Bielefeld University.

“With a slightly sideward glance, you may still feel as if you are being looked at.”

To test the observation, Horstmann and colleague Dr Sebastian Loth had 24 people look at the Mona Lisa on a computer screen and assess the direction

of her gaze. The participants sat in front of the monitor and a simple folding ruler was positioned between them and the screen at several distances. The participants indicated where Mona Lisa’s gaze met the ruler.

Of more than 2000 assessments, nearly every measurement indicated that the Mona gaze was not straight on but to the viewer’s right-hand side.

“More specifically, the gaze angle was 15.4 degrees on average,” Horstmann said. “Thus, it is clear that the term Mona Lisa Effect is nothing but a misnomer.

“It illustrates the strong desire to be looked at and to be someone else’s centre

of attention — to be relevant to someone, even if you don’t know the person at all.”

Robot hate on the rise

It’s not quite The Jetsons but we’re seeing more and more robots in everyday life. Researchers from Germany’s University of Wurzburg are reporting growing scepticism about them, and especially about their roles in the workplace.

An analysis of data from more than 80,000 European residents found that, while people saw robots as useful helpers for mundane or dangerous tasks, they weren’t keen on robots acting as drivers, surgeons or caretakers.

Some other interesting patterns emerged: women were more sceptical than men about robots, as were bluecollar workers when compared with people in office jobs. And, contrary to assumptions that the elderly are a bunch of technophobes, the attitudes towards robots were more positive in countries with a high proportion of older people.

Overall, they found dislike of robots, at least in Europe, had grown over the past few years — something they concluded should be a warning sign for politicians and business leaders.